As I'm moving closer and closer to medical school, I seem to be doing less and less medicine. From helping build a local bar as a volunteer (a worthy cause, in my book), to hack-building cool gadgets. I'm picking up bizarre skill sets left and right. This is adding to the already diverse skill sets I had acquired on my previous jobs. I'll detail my rants, raves and experiences here.

Sunday, February 24, 2013

I'm hoping this post can clear up some mis-information regarding the two I2C buses on the Raspberry Pi Model B rev 2.

In the upper left hand corner of the board you can see the GPIO header. Below that is the P5 header footprint, a 2x4 series of vias. You won't see the P5 label until you flip the board over.

Now, there are some folks that will tell you the only way to get to the second I2C bus is to access the camera S5 header (or the S2 header). That would involve some incredible soldering work, or a socket. I don't have the socket, and my hands aren't good enough to solder at that pitch.

However, I can solder that P5 header. The unfortunate thing is that the P5 header is really close to the GPIO header. Using the P5 header while using Lady Ada's Pi Cobbler header may be problematic. I took some long headers and soldered them in place, at a slight angle.

I used a 2x5 socket on the header, and spaced it with a penny (between the 2x5 socket and the ribbon cable).

The process is actually pretty easy. If you're a novice solderer you shouldn't be too daunted by this task. Hey, the Pi itself is $35. It's OK.

Once you get that done, you need to run some code. I'll post the Python 3.x code in a bit. Here's a link to the original code. All that needs to be done for the Python 3.x code is to change the print statements to print() functions. Here's the link to the RaspberryPi.org forums, where bgreat posted the code:http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=33092

In hindsight, I should have looked at putting a 2x4 socket there. I'm just not sure that I have any.